not this day
by TolkienGirl
Summary: Five days is the march from Minas Tirith to Morannon. (Legolas has time to think.) Book and movie canon combination, RoTK, Legolas and Gimli friendship, and others. No slash.


**A/N: Just rewatched** ** _RoTK_** **for the first time in some years. Was blown away by it, utterly, as always. My goodness. I was struck by the fact that days pass (five, according to canon) while they march from Gondor to Morannon. And because Legolas is my favorite, I couldn't help wondering what he was thinking. This is a combination of book and movie canon, with the canon relating to Legolas's mother being drawn from** ** _The Hobbit_** **movies.**

Five days is the march from Minas Tirith to Morannon, and though elves have never struggled to grasp the weave of time, Legolas cannot be sure if it is too many days or too few.

He could have run it more swiftly on foot, if well-rested. On horseback, swifter still.

But men must rest, and he has learned their ways.

.

They march unceasingly by day, horses and men together. Day is dark and night darker, but only when the sky is at its blackest do they make up their camps.

Legolas knows with near certainty that they will not come back.

.

Elves know what it is to die in battle. Among men, the honor would be much the greater. Elves value sacrifice, but they live too long to conceal from their own hearts the pain it brings.

A noble death will satisfy kin and country, but his father's grief would be still unbounded.

These vast plains, these cleft and cragged mountains—the earth reminds him keenly how far he is from home. He will not die under treetops, as he might have wished.

But then, he never wished to die at all.

.

Gimli's sturdy presence is a comfort behind him. Together they have traced leagues of land together, and fought many foes. Now, in these last days, they scout ahead, sometimes, with a few of the guard. It is Gimli who puffs at his pipe by the light of the campfires, those five nights, as he has for dozens of nights before. It is Gimli who draws Merry and Pippin into conversation and tales of their valor, small and great—Merry and Pippin, whose faces have grown too grave.

Legolas is not afraid of death. He faced it in Moria, in Helm's Deep, on Pelennor Fields. He faced the dead themselves, and his heart was calm.

But a calm heart may still be heavy.

.

"Another contest lies before us," Gimli mutters behind him on the third day, as they ride. A breeze of spring, swept behind their heels from Gondor before it is dissipated by Mordor's gloom and stench, gives Arod fresh speed.

"You bested me at Helm's Deep, and I you at Pelennor," Legolas reminds him. "A third victory will upset the draw."

"And the fourth may return us to it," rumbles Gimli.

As though there will be a fourth contest. As though Gimli will ever again gape in joy and wonder at caverns beneath the earth, or Legolas sing among the outstretched limbs of the forest. As though Aragorn will ever rule from Minas Tirith with a crown upon his head.

But he answers, "Even so, my friend," and lifts his eyes to the sky's hues beneath the heavy gray of Sauron's storm.

.

He wonders if Gil-Galad dreamed of death, in the days before he met his doom on the slopes of Orodruin. He wonders if Elrond of Rivendell, Elrond who was _there_ —believed that he would not survive.

He wonders if his mother dreamed of death before Angbad, and if she did, if there was something that might have changed her fate.

.

On the fourth day, they ride close to Aragorn. They have passed through Ithilien. Anduril's blade, unsheathed in the daylight, seems to shine more brightly than the dimmed sun.

"Once more we ride together," Aragorn tells them both, with a smile creasing his lips. His face is peaceful, though his eyes, when they gaze forward, are like steel.

Those who have blanched at the nearing battle have been sent away, without shame but without honor.

Most men, Legolas knows, fear death. He wonders if it is because they know it better and more often than elves do, or if for all its inevitability, they do not understand it at all.

.

They camp in Morannon that night. Their numbers are fewer than Legolas would wish, but is it not always so? They have taken their time in marching, and he finds himself grateful for the ways of men. They are quick in thought and anger, but slower in some ways by necessity. He does not rest as they do, but if there are more moments to count the smoke rings from Gimli's pipe, or to see that Pippin still smiles in his sleep, Legolas would not begrudge them.

"Tomorrow," Gimli says, before he takes to his bedroll. It must be tomorrow; this last night must come and now it does. Legolas offers whispers to the Valar in remembrance of his mother, who must be drawn close to him at this moment, and for his father, whose mind must be with the Greenwood but whose heart is surely with his son.

"Indeed," he says, "Tomorrow." Something leaps up within him—a flame, amid all this cloaking shadow. For if tomorrow is all that remains, and if they are not coming back—what then? Why should he be calm, or heavy-hearted? Why should he even think to be afraid?

He has lived thousands of days under leaf and sun and star, and he fights tomorrow for all those things and for his friends. He smiles through the dusk at Gimli, and takes up his knives to sharpen them.


End file.
